5.30.12

Decided to have a lost day on Tuesday.

Monday night after getting back from our lovely dinner, we found out that we may not have jobs after all. We think there were some serious misunderstandings during our tour and since our translator didn’t actually speak very good English, there were some lost in translation issues. So, we all had a stressful night. I didn’t get to sleep until 1am, after looking in to plane tickets to Bali and checking out the job postings on Dave’s ESL Cafe…

This IS, after all, Thailand. Hiccups are par for the course. However, suddenly feeling like you are about to be stranded on the other side of the world is not fun.

In the morning (after a few phone calls and emails), we found that everything had been sorted except they only wanted three of us. Fortunately, I was one of the ones they wanted. Poor Steven wouldn’t be getting a job here. He didn’t really have any training since he had gotten Dengue fever on Koh Chang and spent about a week in the hospital in Ban Phe. They were going to get him a position with Siam Computers in Bangkok, but he opted to head back to the States instead.

Andrew Biggs’ right-hand man would be flying in to do some additional training to make sure that we knew how they wanted the students to be taught. I was actually very happy with that. I am so nervous to start teaching. Anything additional I can get before classes begin I will take.

So, Patricia and I opted to do nothing all day. Found some American/Canadian TV channels, worked on photos, spruced up the website a bit and ordered room service (which just means that I went downstairs, ordered my food and they brought it up to me at no extra charge). Patricia had been meant to make a border run to Malaysia for her visa and I was supposed to look at apartments with our escort, Neung. However, since the dilemma didn’t get sorted until later in the morning, those things didn’t happen.

Neung did check out some apartments but she wasn’t terribly impressed. Patricia made a call to a contact and we planned to go look at some other places the next day.

We junked out and had cookies for dinner. Because we are adults and we can.

Asleep by 9:30pm.

I shouldn’t have given Patricia two melatonin. She talked in her sleep all night. And not just talking. Shouting. I wasn’t sure until this morning if it was really happening (because I can sleep through anything and thought I was dreaming), but she confirmed for me that it had happened. No more melatonin for her…

The next morning, she left for Malaysia to do her visa run. I thought she would be back late that afternoon, but Neung told me later that she wouldn’t be back until Thursday. Oh well, a day to myself in the hotel room. Took my laundry across the street, requested that they wash all the clothes in nam yen (cold water) and arranged to pick them up the next morning.

Neung went out and looked at more apartments. I seriously just want to put her in my pocket and keep her. She is so adorable and helpful. I will miss her terribly when she heads back to Ban Phe. She found one that is, literally, spitting distance to the school. We would be able to walk out the back door, through the shrubs and be in the side garden of the school. However, it is 7,000 baht a month and she wants a 15,000 baht deposit (even though it is month to month). The landlady is absolutely adorable and told me I was beautiful (now I will feel bad if we don’t take it…). It has two bedrooms on the top floor, each with a balcony and restroom. Furnished, which is nice. When I asked about the kitchen, she took me back downstairs into the third bedroom, which had a queen-size bed and an armoire. No sink, no fridge, no hot-plate. Nothing that would indicate ‘kitchen’. She said she would move the furniture out and this would be the kitchen. I asked about a fridge and what I got from Neung was ‘no fridge’, but we could get a microwave… Goodie. Still no sink. It also has a living room space that she would put furniture in. No A/C but it has an oscillating fan. No internet, but we should be able to piggyback off the school. I told her that I would need to talk to Patricia about it when she returns from Malaysia. I think that she will want to confer with her contact, as do I, and see what she has found. I’m hesitant about paying so much for so little. I also didn’t check in the bathrooms to see if THEY had sinks, because it didn’t occur to me that they wouldn’t. I asked Neung to check on that when we were back at the hotel.

We got some snacks at the mini mart in the hotel (A&W rootbeer!) and headed back to our respective rooms. Poor Neung is just wiped out from the last couple of days and she was laughing about her farmer’s tan on her legs and flip-flop tans on her feet from riding around on scooter taxis. I let her know to come and get me if she decided that she wanted to step out for a bite to eat.

Not sure what tomorrow’s agenda is. The gentleman from Andrew Biggs should be getting in to town and we will probably need to check out some more properties. In the meantime, I don’t mind spending another night in this lovely mansion.